All posts in Deliver Phase

The Government has announced that the reason behind this week’s cabinet re-shuffle is to focus on delivering upon the initiatives the previous cabinet created in the first half of this 5-year term.

Those of you who know my work know that I talk a lot about the strategic planning cycle that all successful businesses follow. It appears that the Government is also following the four phases of this cycle and have just entered the third Deliver phase.

I do hope that alongside this phase they also implement the fourth review phase.

To develop and execute the right strategy year-on-year it’s crucial that the four phases of the annual cycle work together in the right way.

In my last post I talked about the importance of connecting the dots of your strategy plan from your vision to your tactics, understanding the impact on your business of setting out to achieve your goals and the need to align the different areas of your business in order to do just that.

I used the example of entering a new market sector and converting new prospects and highlighted some of the areas involved in doing this such as sales, marketing, engineering and HR.

These are functional parts of a company and aligning goals, objectives and tactics to them is not straight forward simply because they are separate vertical sections.

To connect these dots, rather than try and align by functional departments or groups, align the goal, and work involved in achieving it, by horizontal processes.

Using the above example you may split the goal into the process of entering a new market and the process of converting a prospect. Break the processes down into logical steps and you will see how they involve a number of vertical functions.

The process, for a technology company, of entering a new market will involve market research (marketing), client profiling (sales), possibly new product features (engineering), new targeted marketing strategy, messages and collateral (marketing), possibly sales training (HR/marketing/engineering), PR (marketing), new account management (sales), relationship building (sales/directors), new contracts, pricing, services-level agreements, customers (administration), technical support (engineering) and of course a budget (finance).

That’s one process and around six separate functional sections of the company.

So you see, connecting the dots from a goal to the tactics and the tasks involved, is easier to do when broken down into steps within a process. The various functions or departments involved can then plan their role and align with each other to achieve an efficient execution of this process.

Define all the processes in your business and align the roles of the relevant functions to each. Assign someone to be in charge of the processes so that they can work with each function involved to ensure the processes are aligned and run as smoothly as possible to achieve the company goals.

Assuming your annual cycle began last week then ideally your ship has left the harbour it was docked at for the Christmas break and has now set off on its new 2012 course.

Your company is in the new Deliver phase of your strategic planning cycle and you and your teams are implementing the tactics that were set to achieve the objectives and milestones which were created to achieve the goals which were established at the end of last year to drive the company to where it needs to be at the end of 2012.

Not only have you made sure that everything is connected from your purpose through your vision and mission, and your goals and objectives to your tactics, but you have aligned everything to make sure they have the best chance of being achieved and producing the best return possible.

For example, one of your objectives may be to convert a specific number of new prospects in a particular market sector. Your sales tactics will include visiting these new prospects to convert.

Sales will struggle to do this if the right prospects haven’t been identified and the right messages and solutions put together by marketing. So, marketing are working on the tasks to identify these prospects, understand their needs and match the best solution to meet them.

Marketing will also need to create the compelling marketing messages which will attract these prospects. That way there will be a higher probability that their sales colleagues will be able to make the visit, address any questions and objections and eventually convert the prospect to a buyer.

Peter Drucker once said something like, “The purpose of marketing is to make sales superfluous.” Marketing should at least aim to present sales with a warm, receptive customer and ideally one that craves what you are selling.

For sales to have the best possible chance to achieve their objective they may need training if the solution or benefits are new. This should be an objective of say HR and have been scheduled in advance to minimise disruption.

And we haven’t touched on engineering or support being aligned to provide and support this new solution.

Every new idea, every new goal, new objective will disrupt the status quo and so everything that needs to be done needs to be planned and the stages connected both hierarchically, between objectives and tactics, but also across the tactics themselves. If they aren’t then actions will be less effective or be lost, milestones missed and time and money wasted getting the business back on course.

Even if you run a business of one, the principles are the same.

We haven’t looked at the systems and processes that are involved and the impact on them in achieving this objective so I’ll cover this next time.

Have you connected the dots from your vision to your tactics so that everything is aligned to hit your milestones and achieve your targets?

Regardless of when the fiscal year starts, many businesses see January as the start of a new year and hence a new cycle for the business.

Having said that many business owners struggle to step back from their business and plan the year ahead as they drive towards the year end. They make the decision to “do their plan” in the first week of January but find that they’re straight back into the business and the plan is either looked at when there is spare time or not at all.

But without stepping back and creating a new plan your business will meander through the next annual cycle and hopefully grow. At the best of times this is not a good idea…in this economic climate, this is simply crazy.

You cannot purposefully get to a particular point/destination/goal without a plan.

Here are 7 important checks to help you make sure you’ve covered the key areas.

1. Review and learn
How did the last 12 months go? What worked and what didn’t? Did you spend more than you anticipated? Did you lose some opportunities or customers? Did you support your customers well? Have you grown market share? Did you meet your goals? What happened that you weren’t expecting? What worked really well?

Do a thorough review of how the year went and make sure you have answers to all the many questions you should ask. This assessment will help you set some of the goals for the year ahead so that your company is stronger and more effective.

2. Work on your findings
From the assessment identify any weak and vulnerable areas and identify where you differentiated from your competitors as these are strengths that you need to exploit. Once you have these listed create plans to strengthen weak areas, exploit strengths and mitigating plans for all risks to your business.

3. Check your core purpose
Review your company’s purpose, vision and mission. From the year that’s gone are they still sound and valid? A year is a long time in business and it’s worth checking that you’re still on course to reach your long term aims and that these aims haven’t changed.

Things can change and events may occur which can impact the core of the company’s reason for being and what it is striving to achieve.

4. What to do
Create a balanced set of hierarchical goals; a set of goals that drive the business forward and make it stronger and more effective. Too often goals are simply an extension of what was achieved the previous year; revenue + x%, profit + y% and so on.
Be creative and set one or two visionary goals that will take the business to another level, 4 or 5 vital goals that will achieve the growth you need in the next 12 months, 6 or 7 important goals that will support the other goals and make sure they are achievable and some routine goals which will improve aspects of your business but which won’t have a detrimental effect on results if not achieved.

5. How to do it
Plan how you intend to achieve these goals. Work with those responsible for implementing the objectives and tactics and create a plan with measurable milestones and responsibilities. If you own your own business, with no people, do this anyway…you need to step out of your business and set targets.

6. Making it work
Make sure everyone in your company and other key stakeholders like your bank, investors and strategic partners understands and embraces the plan. Even share it with key customers assuming it demonstrates how your plan helps their business. Create a one-page summary of your strategy plan, print it onto large paper and put it where people can see it and see how their role contributes to it.

7. Staying on course
Establish a system and timetable for monitoring and reviewing progress. All companies stray off course if progress isn’t regularly monitored and reviewed. Set early milestones to check you’ve headed in the right direction during Q1.

If, like most companies you’re at the half-way point in the year, you’ll be checking your progress against your business plan.

This month I have been focused on how to have effective quarterly review meetings in both this blog and my email messages because these up-and-coming quarterly review meetings will be particularly important. This is your last real opportunity to adapt your strategy plan and make any significant course corrections.

As you prepare for your quarterly review meetings I’d like to make a suggestion. I’d like you to think about how to make this and future quarterly reviews as mutually benficial as possible.

This aim might sound a little obvious but from my past experience, and in speaking with others, the vast majority of meetings tend to benefit the reviewer rather than the reviewee. (Just to be clear, the ‘reviewer’ is the one seeking the data such as a the silicon vendor and the ‘reviewee’ the one collating and presenting it, such as a distributor.)

As the reviewer who gains more from the meetings, speak to the other party prior to the meeting and outline why you need the information. Explain that it isn’t just a data mining exercise and outline how the findings from the meetings will also benfit the reviewee.

For example, explain that if a particular product isn’t selling well, then with the reviewee’s feedback as to the the challenges they’re experiencing, the reviewer’s company will discuss the problems and either improve the product, or the sales training or marketing messages or whatever else is needed, to help the reviewee meet future targets.

As the reviewee, if there are topics you wish to raise then explain why and get them on the agenda prior to the meeting.

Great leaders negotiate for mutually beneficial results and both sides need to be responsible for ensuring that these meetings achieve just that.

Enter the meeting knowing why you’re all there and the mutual gains to be had. Work as valued partners on the same level and adopt the attitude that these are vital meetings that are worth every minute spent on them and which will help keep both companies on course.

What do you think will help quarterly reviews be the productive, mutually beneficial meetings they should be?

Your Business Foundation

My name is Christopher Briggs, the author of the best selling book "Your Business Foundation".
I help business owners build their business on a strong foundation that gives them the certainty and control they need to achieve their aims.

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